Name: 【TEDx】Basic Income: An Idea Whose Time Has Come | James Mulvale | TEDxUManitoba
Uploaded: 2017-03-25T19:19:10.000Z
Duration: 17 min 52 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Good afternoon, Bonjour, Tansi. [English, French, Cree]

Adverbs of degree

and I'm here to talk to you about an idea I'm very excited about.

something we've talked about in Canada for a long time,

but it's really been coming to the forefront very recently.

and the place to start is with the definition.

It's an income unconditionally granted to each individual

without a means test or other conditions.

And it actually differs in very substantial ways,

very important ways, from existing income security programs.

It's paid to individuals, rather than households.

It's paid irrespective of any income from other sources.

So people will, in the vast majority of cases,

continue to work for wages and salaries, will start small businesses, will farm.

for a very important form of economic security.

And it's paid without regard to performance of any paid work.

from the kind of workfare, and punitive, income security programs,

which have come into place in recent years.

There's two delivery mechanisms for basic income,

two general ways in which it can be paid out,

and gotten into the hands of all the people in society.

is paid on a regular basis to everybody in society.

it could be deposited in your bank account

it can be, if it's designed in this way, taxed back from high-incomers

The second general way to deliver it is called "the negative income tax",

And in this case, a threshold of adequacy is set,

in order to live a comfortable and dignified life.

If you fall below that threshold, then your benefit kicks in.

the more benefit you get to bring you up to the threshold.

In that sense it's targeted to those most in need, and it's also perhaps

We actually have examples of both of these mechanisms still in place,

in relation to current benefits for children.

Those of you who are old enough to remember the old family benefits,

- the baby bonus, in 1995, and previous -

The current child tax benefit is delivered

as a refundable tax credit, or a negative income tax.

What I'm going to do for the rest of my talk

is give an overview of what I think are the five key reasons we need to implement

an effective basic income program in this country.

and, one would hope, eventually eliminate poverty.

This is an important reason on two counts.

First of all, in a wealthy country like Canada, with bountiful resources

and one of the highest qualities of life in the world,

it's a moral obscenity that we have the high rates of poverty that we have.

The second reason we need to reduce poverty in this country

First of all, on the moral side, why we need to address poverty.

One in seven, 4.9 million, Canadians live in a state of poverty.

It hits certain vulnerable groups particularly hard.

are 50 percent of status first nations' children live in poverty.

Almost 60 percent of women with disabilities.

and it hits particular groups in very hard ways.

The second reason we need to reduce poverty,

and basic income is a means to do this, I would argue,

The combined public and private costs of alleviating poverty

or addressing the problems that result from poverty,

we get into staggering figures in the 70 and 80 billion dollar range.

Remedial cost, this means there's a tremendous relationship

between living in poverty and bad health outcomes;

disease, hospitalization, heavy reliance on the healthcare system.

it make sense that we could also reduce costs in the healthcare system.

There's other negative effects of poverty that cost us,

including children that don't do well in school

child welfare costs, cost in the criminal justice system.

All of these problems are related with high rates of poverty.

The second point here relates with poverty,

there are costs related to loss of revenues.

in order to join the labor market and have a good job.

For instance, if you talk to people who live in poverty

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【TEDx】Basic Income: An Idea Whose Time Has Come | James Mulvale | TEDxUManitoba

individual

eliminate

tremendous

pursue